The Jas Townsend & Son company has been putting out a lot of videos of interest to historical reenactors. They recently did this short one on gaming/gambling in Colonial America. They mention Backgammon and here is one of the quotes they probably are referring to written by an Englishman wrote home to a friend in 1768:

“They have a vile practice here, which is peculiar to the city (New York). I mean that of playing at back-gammon (a noise I detest) which is going forward at the public coffee-houses from morning till night, frequently a dozen tables at a time.”

We picked up a new event out side of Chicago this weekend, so I’m unexpectedly having to have re-stock some of our games earlier than normal, and a little behind on the the blog/podcast. I’ll be back next week with a new audio episode, until then here is a look at version of Backgammon that dates to Ancient Rome.

Backgammon games traveled to the Near East from India, and may have been imported to Europe by the Romans. Emperor Claudius (A.D. 41-54) was fond of an early version of Backgammon called Tabula. Emperor Zeno (A.D. 475-81) once had such bad luck playing Tabula that the positions of his men on the board were described a century later by Agathias, a scholastic of Myrine, in Asia. This 6th century record has enabled scholars to recreate the game of Tabula with what is believed a fair degree of accuracy. We have included the rules for Tabula as well as 31 other national and historic variations on Backgammon, which can be played on a standard board.

Tabula

Three dice are used in Tabula, and the roll can be used to move, 1, 2, or 3 pieces during the turn. For example, a roll of 2-4-5 can be used to move a single piece the total of 11 spaces, or two pieces could be moved: 1 moving two spaces, and the other nine spaces (4+5). Any similar combination could also be used. Or three men could be moved 2, 4, and 5 spaces each.

All the pieces start off of the board, and both players start in the same corner of the board, and unlike the modern game both travel counter clock-wise around the board to bear off. A player may not advance his men until all of them are on the board. Blots are hit as in modern Backgammon, and hit men must re-enter the board before any other men can move. A player must use all of his roll of the dice even if it endangers his men. Any part of a throw is lost if it is blocked by the other player’s pieces.

An optional rule is that no piece may be borne off of the board until all of the player’s pieces are in the home table. If a blot is hit, no more pieces may be borne off until that man has re-entered the home.

Remember, you can submit an audio question about the history of games to be used on an audio episode using the button in the upper left, or use the Submit a Question form if you’re bashful.

Since we use glass drops as game piece for some of our portable fabric games we often have people think a couple of our games have something to do with the game Pente which was sold with glass drops as game pieces.

The theme music is “Scully’s Reel/Mrs.McCloud’s/Cooley’s Reel” by the band Slánte from their Album Cup of Tea and is used under a Creative Commons share-alike license.

We went with blank backs on our decks both to keep the price down as well as avoid having them be “marked cards” which would happen with the different musical scores on the backs of one of the surviving examples.

I’ve put together another short video about one of the games we sell. This one covers the basic rules for 12-Man Morris as we prefer to play it. Our board was designed to be used either for 9-Man Morris, or 12-Man.